Günther,



Thanks for your input and for considering MASON. As our documentation says

(Luke et al. 2005), you should consider MASON if you need:

-replicability guarantee

-computational and visualization separation for

-lots of runs (>10^3) without viz every run ;-)

-checkpointing for stats analysis

-evolutionary computational methods, as common for assessing learning.



Perhaps these performance features fit your project on cultural diffusion

modeling.



Tony Bigbee wrote the most complete replication of Sugarscape, which the

three of us (Bigbee, Cioffi, Luke 2005) presented as a paper at the ESSA

meeting last year in Koblenz. We will make sure to send you the revised

paper as we develop it. MASON Sugarscape implements many more rules than

previous models, such as those in Repast, Netlogo. Both Epstein and Axtell

(now at our Center, no longer Brookings) provided input.



Alles gut



Claudio



--

Claudio Cioffi-Revilla



Professor of Computational Social Sciences

Director, Center for Social Complexity

Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, George Mason University

Research-1 Bldg MS 6B2, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030 U.S.A.

tel (703) 993-1402, fax (703) 993-1399, [log in to unmask]

Center & Grad Program http://socialcomplexity.gmu.edu

 MASON Project http://cs.gmu.edu/~eclab/projects/mason/





on 9/25/06 6:33 PM, Sean Luke at [log in to unmask] wrote:



> On Sep 25, 2006, at 4:55 PM, Günther Greindl wrote:

> 

>> I have surveyed the field of ABM simulation software,

>> and have finally decided I will either settle for Repast or

>> Mason -  both appeal to me: Repast because it is specifically

>> designed to meet Social Simulation needs and seems to has

>> a big following in the socsim community, and Mason because of it's

>> design (on the code level). (lean and mean  ;-)

>> 

>> Has anybody tested both platforms and can offer some insight

>> on the differences (I'm interested in _opinions_ :-))?

> 

> I obviously have a bias.  :-)  So I'll let others speak on MASON's

> behalf.  However, it's worth mentioning:

> 

>> A good starting point seems to me the sugarscape model (I also want

>> to include resources and competition between the agents).

>> The agents should be adaptive in the long run (read: learning

>> ability) -

>> although this goes somewhat contrary to the keep it simple paradigm.

>> 

>> There is an implementation for Repast, it is also listed on the

>> Mason site

>> as a project but I did not find a download.

> 

> Tony Bigbee and Claudio Cioffi-Revilla are your answer men here.

> Tony Bigbee did what I understand to be the most complete Repast

> reimplementation anywhere.  He did it in MASON.  I believe Tony is

> cleaning up the code and he may be able to give you some

> information.  I'm cc:ing him.

> 

> Sean